Brian Johnstone is an educator, student and social justice activist. He is currently a teacher at King/Drew Magnet High School in south Los Angeles and a Ph.D. candidate in Social Sciences and Comparative Education at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Brian has extensive experience working with youth, international education programs, and student travel excursions. During the past 12 years, Brian has led student travel excursions on four continents and has participated in educational programs and dialogue with students and teachers from many countries throughout the world, including Ghana, Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq. Brian uses these experiences as a student, teacher, educational activist, and international travel organizer to ensure excursions with Traveling Spirits are informative and transformative for the participants.

As a founding member of Traveling Spirits, Brian is continuing his work to raise awareness about institutional systems of oppression, exploitation and domination, in both local and global contexts. Brian firmly believes that only through an awareness of the complexities and varied manifestations of oppression will it ever be possible to truly work towards global justice and human rights.

"To surmount the situation ofoppression, people must firstcritically recognize its causes, sothat through transforming actionthey can create a new situation,onewhich makes possible the pursuit ofa fuller humanity."